George Monbiot, writing in The Guardian, says more floods are coming to Britain, and that the network of public bodies supposed to safeguard us are bastions of self-interest.

Labour’s first stage of government resembles a vast forensic excavation. As it works through the Conservatives’ midden of horrors, it discovers an ever greater legacy of underinvestment, neglect and corruption. However disappointing the new government’s compromises might be, we shouldn’t forget how overwhelming this task must feel.

So I’m sorry to expose yet another toxic stratum. It contains a series of stupendous failures in the governance of rural bodies, which, in the case I want to discuss, put human lives at risk.

Last week, the Guardian revealed alarming aspects of governance in several of England’s national parks, whose boards are starkly unrepresentative of the population and lack the expertise required to protect and restore the ecology of our national properties. This chimes with my experience: in some places, park boards appear to behave like private fiefdoms working on behalf of powerful local interests and against the public and environmental good. It’s as though Restore Trust, the opaquely funded reactionaries trying to take over the National Trust, had instead taken over the national parks.

But our national park boards look competent and diverse in comparison with another group of rural bodies, the internal drainage boards. You may not have heard of them, but if your home is threatened by floods, you may wish to have a word. Good luck with that.

Internal drainage boards (IDBs), of which there are 112 in England and Wales, are supposed to drain agricultural land and control floods. As most IDBs are dominated by rural landowners, they are pretty good at the first task. But the result of this drainage is often to speed water down the catchment towards towns and cities.

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